The presentation of survey requests represents an easily modifiable feature of survey communications that can in some contexts affect response propensities. Here, we examine how two features: the framing of the participation request (informed by prospect theory) and the inclusion of targeted appeals based on demographic background (age or…

Declining survey response rates concern researchers aiming to ensure study validity. This article tested the effectiveness of multiple pre-incentives on increasing survey response to the Millennium Cohort Study. Participants consisted of U.S. military service members and veterans, and were randomly assigned to receive a $2 bill, $5 gift card,…

Questionnaire designers are encouraged to write questions as complete sentences. In self-administered surveys, incomplete question stems may reduce visual clutter but may also increase burden when respondents need to scan the response options to fully complete the question. We experimentally examine the effects of three categories of incomplete…

Previous research extensively studied reasons for and ways to avoid low response rates, but it largely ignored the primary research issue of the degree to which response rates matter, which we address. Methodological survey research on response rates has been concerned with how to increase responsiveness and with the effects of response rates on…

Researchers have become increasingly interested in response times to survey items as a measure of cognitive effort. We used machine learning to develop a prediction model of response times based on 41 attributes of survey items (e.g., question length, response format, linguistic features) collected in a large, general population sample. The…

Adaptive survey design refers to using targeted procedures to recruit different sampled cases. This technique strives to reduce bias and variance of survey estimates by trying to recruit a larger and more balanced set of respondents. However, it is not well understood how adaptive design can improve data and survey estimates beyond the…

Nonresponse bias is a widely prevalent problem for data on education. We develop a ten-step exemplar to guide nonresponse bias analysis (NRBA) in cross-sectional studies and apply these steps to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011. A key step is the construction of indices of nonresponse bias based on proxy…

Surveys of income are complicated by the sensitive nature of the topic. The problem researchers face is how to encourage participants to respond and to provide truthful responses in surveys. To correct biases induced by nonresponse or underreporting, we propose a two-stage multilevel randomized response (MRR) technique to investigate the true…

For hard-to-survey populations such as ethnic minorities and immigrants, increasing survey response rates is a crucial element of the fieldwork as these populations often show a higher likelihood of not participating compared with the native population. However, no study has so far compared different strategies for mobilisation within this group.…

A growing number of people live in apartments worldwide, and research into these contexts is key to the success of our cities. Recruiting apartment residents as research participants can be challenging, however, especially when using a case study approach. This research note outlines the participant recruitment method developed for case study…

Responsive survey design is a technique aimed at improving the efficiency or quality of surveys by using incoming data from the field to make design changes. The technique was pioneered on large national surveys, but the tools can also be applied on the smaller-scale surveys most commonly used by sociologists. We demonstrate responsive survey…

Questionnaire designers use readability measures to ensure that questions can be understood by the target population. The most common measure is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level, but other formulas exist. This article compares six different readability measures across 150 questions in a self-administered questionnaire, finding notable variation in…

Despite the widespread use of examples in survey questions, very few studies have examined their impact on survey responses, and the evidence is mainly based on data collected in the United States using questionnaires in English. This study builds on previous research by examining the effects of providing examples using data from a cross-national…

A decline in response rates was found for agricultural education research studies using survey research methods. The use of incentives and various response modes can affect survey response rates and were the focus of this experiment. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of survey response mode and incentives on response rates…

Collecting biological data in representative surveys is becoming more common due to their potential to inform research and policy. Nevertheless, using nurses to collect these data can lead to unintended effects. In this paper, we investigate how nurses influence the non-response process by looking at five waves of data coming from two surveys in…